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The first spacecraft to land on an asteroid has finally lost contact with
Earth. Mission controllers for the NEAR Shoemaker craft landed it on Eros on 12
February after taking some final close-up shots of the surface. To their
surprise, it continued sending back detailed information about the composition
of the asteroid. But controllers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore
finally closed down the communications link with the spacecraft on 28 February
because of a lack of solar power. “This mission has been successful far beyond
what was in the original mission plan,” says mission director Robert Farquhar.